Were they making a huge mistake?
No matter. It was too late to change it now. Yet he feared that he might do something irrational if he stayed in the ceremony hall, so he had taken up his pistol and headed out into the cathedral. The walls of the cathedral were thick, and the black stone muted sounds somehow, but it was still possible to hear distant gunfire as he made his way through the corridors. The wych-hunters were inside, that much he knew. The dogs had been released, and those of the Fraternity who were not part of the ceremony had taken up arms in defence; but the cathedral was huge and its ways were winding, and it was impossible to tell from which direction the shots came.
Damn it all, nobody had prepared for this! Nobody was supposed to even know the cathedral was there, let alone get to it. There was no way on Earth anyone could have got to them overground. The airships were a consideration, of course; the Wards had always kept them away before, disguising the cathedral from their sight and subtly suggesting that they drop their payloads elsewhere when they came to the Old Quarter on their bombing runs. But careful use of their contacts in the military meant that the airships would never get the authorization to fly.
All of his fellow cultists had been occupied with what was happening inside the cathedral. None had thought to look out to the sheltered courtyard. At a casual glance, all seemed normal; and there were few windows that let on to the front gate anyway, and those were narrow and fogged with stained glass. But it was only Maycraft who had wondered how the wych-hunters got here, and looked out, and seen the great tether attached to the bar on the front gate. And then he had looked up, and seen it, the faint drone of the engine masked by the hum of the cathedral and the racket of the rabid wych-kin outside.
An airship! A blasted airship!
Now he stepped through the dining hall where the heart of the fighting had been, pushing his way through tables and running his eyes distastefully over the warped and twisted corpses of the wych-dogs that lay about. He paused when he came to the body of the Devil-boy, and then laughed aloud when he saw Blake nearby. So, he finally got the end he deserved. Bloody good job, as well. The man was an animal.
He found his way out to the great doors, the only entrance to the cathedral. Those which were supposed to be locked and Warded with guards so strong that not even Pyke could break them. They stood ajar now.
His pistol held to his shoulder, he crept towards the thin ray of red light that slit the tall black doors in two, and looked outside.
Gregor peered out of the gondolas passenger door and down at the courtyard below. In the glaring red light from the vile swirl of clouds above, he could see that the airships primary anchor was still in place, wrapped around the bar of the outer gate. He swore in Russian. The ropes were not going to tear, nor the bar. He knew what waited beyond that gate, but he did not care. Anyone inside the cathedral could fend for themselves; he was getting away fast.
“Pah!” he said, slamming the gondola door. “I am done with you all!”
He stalked back to the cockpit and sat down in his chair. The airship did not have enough engine power to break away; that much he knew. The engines were weak, only designed to push along the great balloon that hung above it.
Well, if he wanted the anchor ropes gone, there was one easy way to do it. He would be glad to be finished with the whole lot. Before he could think better of it, he flipped a pair of switches on the dash, and the airship jolted as the pair of bombs hanging beneath it came loose and dropped.
Maycraft was just wondering what he was going to do about the airship hanging above him when he saw the dull bulb-shapes detach from its underside. Of the four seconds they took to reach the ground, Maycraft spent two wondering what they were, one in horrified realization and the last with his entire life literally flashing before his eyes. He disappeared in a blast of white heat, annihilated in the heart of the explosion. The front door and gate of the cathedral were blown to match wood, the courtyard erupting in a volley of rubble. The near section of the cathedral wall buckled and then collapsed under the weight of the stone that it held up, slumping into a heap with a terrible roar.
Above it all, the airship jolted free and began to rise, trailing the tattered remains of its anchor rope. Gregor whooped in exultation as he climbed away from the foul cathedral, turning his airship towards the north and heading away with as much speed as he could muster.
He did not hear the howls of glee as the wych-kin came, pouring in through the broken gate, clambering over the rubble and seeping into the cathedral like a poison. They sought the gateway, blindly groping for the power they felt. In their hundreds they came, loping and jumping and gibbering and sliding, shadows and monstrosities and ghosts. In their hundreds, to the unholy cathedral, to feast on what walked within.
PYKE HOLDS THE ANSWERS
THE WYCH-KIN REVEALED
ALL IS ENDED 28
The moment was all scuffle and noise and flash, and then Thaniel hit the floor, a bullet in his gut.
The ringing echo of the shot made those in the ceremony hall jump, but they were well disciplined and knew the consequences of interrupting a Rite as powerful as this one. They had heard the distant gunshots as the wych-hunters had fought their way in, and so they were not wholly unprepared, but some glanced around to see if any of them had fallen. The chant stuttered, but picked up again. The moment of danger passed. Thatch stood immobile; the one reading from the dark texts read on. Even if they were shot one by one, they had to finish the Rite. To break at this late stage would snap their minds like brittle ice on a puddle.
They ignored Alaizabel’s shriek as they had ignored the voices coming from the balcony for a few minutes now, as they had ignored the great rumble that had just shook and staggered them, nearly overturning one of the braziers. An explosion nearby. Beneath their masks, they sweated cold. If that brazier had fallen, it would all be over. Even something that small could upset the pthau’es’maik.
Doctor Mammon Pyke trained his weapon on Cathaline’s forehead.
“My dear Miss Bennett, I did warn him not to try anything.”
“You shot him!” Alaizabel cried.
“Yes, it appears I did,” the Doctor said dryly. “You really must learn that I don’t bluff.”
The explosion at the gates had made the room rattle enough to make Pyke stumble. Thaniel had leaped for the advantage, but it had been too slim for even him. Pyke had brought up his American seven-shot revolver and fired it in haste, laying him low. The bullet rested in the wall now, a dark centre in a blood-spattered web of cracks.
Alaizabel was on her knees next to the boy, trying hopelessly to protect or help him. Cathaline stood nearby, tensed, her gaze flicking from Thaniel to Pyke, as if gauging the chance of revenge against the wiry man.
Thaniel groaned and began to get to his feet.
“No, Thaniel, you must not,” Alaizabel urged, but when it became apparent that he was not staying down, she lent him her arm and helped him. Blood flecked his lips as he faced the Doctor and spoke.
“One lesson I will not soon forget, Doctor,” he wheezed, grimacing. The tear in his clothes was barely visible, but the seeping red to the left of his belly was very obvious.
“My, you do have spirit,” the Doctor said. “It appears by that explosion that someone is causing mischief in my cathedral. You are only alive now in case, by some mischance, they should make it this far. A hostage is a terribly useful thing.”
“Stay still,” Alaizabel hissed, pulling off his coat and tearing back his shirt. If the stubborn fool had to be on his feet, she was damned if she would let him bleed to death. A glance behind him revealed that the bullet had gone right through, which was good. All she could do was staunch the flow until they could get him help.
“You were lucky,” Cathaline said to Pyke. “You did not know we were here. We could have walked into the hall and Thatch would be dead now.”
Pyke laughed, a sound like leaves crunching underfoot. “Miss Bennett, you have walked t
hrough four of my Wards without noticing it. I knew exactly where you were. The area around the hall is littered with little alarms, you see.”
“Cathaline, give me your belt,” Alaizabel ordered. Cathaline did as she was told. Her trousers were tight enough on her hips to not need the leather strap that held them up. Still, if she had been wearing a dress like women were supposed to...
“Pyke,” Thaniel said, then gritted his teeth as a bolt of pain slammed up his side from his wound. He took a breath, steadying himself. “Pyke, you have to stop this.”
“Stop what? Stop the ceremony? Dear boy, you have no idea how long I have worked to make this happen. Whyever should I stop it?”
“You will all die. The Fraternity will be destroyed along with everything else.”
“Possibly,” Pyke conceded, blinking his heavy-lidded eyes and craning his vulture head forward. “I doubt it, though. And what rewards will be ours if we do survive.”
“What?” Thaniel cried. “What will you get? You are already rich, powerful... you have already got more influence than Parliament! Why risk it? You are already the kings and queens of the world!”
Pyke smiled. “You flatter me. Very kind, Thaniel, but ask yourself this: who wants this world? The wych-kin are the new order. They are taking us over, wiping us out, piece by piece. I would rather have it over with and be on their side than die meekly like the rest of you.”
“Fight them, then!”
He laughed then, deep and cruel. “By all that’s holy, boy. Haven’t any of you figured it out yet? You can’t beat them!”
“Why?” asked Thaniel defiantly, spitting blood. “Why not?”
“Because we created them!” he cried. “We create them every day! More and more, darker and nastier, wych-kin upon wych-kin until there’s no-one left. And then they’ll disappear, too.” He gazed at Thaniel levelly. “Thaniel Fox, the wych-kin are not born of wyches like Thatch. They are us!”
Nobody spoke on the balcony. The only sound was the chanting and a faint noise in the very background, a rustling, rattling noise that none of them noticed.
“You’re lying,” Cathaline said.
“No, Miss Bennett!” Pyke cried, astounded, his gaunt frame animate as he spoke. “It’s so obvious! Didn’t you ever wonder why some wych-kin came in the shape of old legends, that had been written before the wych-kin even appeared? We take our own worst nightmares, and we turn them into wych-kin. We take all our sordid guilt, all our hate, all our shame, everything that we dislike about ourselves, and we fashion ghosts to haunt us and monsters to plague us. And we don’t even know we are doing it!”
He stalked over to the other side of the balcony, in full flow now. “Do you know that a human only ever uses ten per cent of its brain in its lifetime, Thaniel? I do! I’ve spent a lot of time examining brains and minds, and what makes them tick. Don’t you wonder what we do with the other nine-tenths? Don’t you wonder what might happen if we began to use a little of that extra? By God, nobody had even heard of a wych-sense thirty years ago. Asylum admissions have quadrupled since the Vernichtung, and you’d be amazed how many of them hear voices, or claim to be in touch with the other side, and sometimes, just sometimes, you can believe them.”
“The Vernichtung,” Thaniel said, too lost in the knowledge that Pyke was providing to even think about where he was, or the hole in his gut. “That was when it began. What happened? What did the Prussian’s bomb that let it all out?”
“Us,” Pyke replied. He frowned suddenly; it seemed as if he could hear a noise, somewhere distant. It was faintly disturbing, but he could not place why. “They bombed us,” he said, recovering himself. “That was when we stopped believing. That was when we truly entered the Age of Reason.”
Alaizabel had torn the sleeve off her dress and wadded it into a compress, as Thaniel seemed not to notice that he was bleeding badly. She could see that he was not just trying to play for time or to distract Pyke, but rather he was genuinely captivated by what the elder man was saying. Cathaline was still poised, waiting for a split-second of an opportunity, but Pyke was too canny to let his guard down.
“The Age of Reason?” she asked. “What has that got to do with anything?”
Alaizabel gave the compress to Thaniel, telling him to hold it in place at his back while she prepared another one for the entry wound. He coughed flecks of blood and did so.
“Ah, Miss Bennett. The Age of Reason is why we’re all here, you know. Since the dawn of time, man has believed in something. Cavemen feared the fires from the sky, the Red Indians had their animal spirits, the Greeks and Romans had their gods, Aztecs had their idols, we had our churches... Don’t you understand? We always had someone to blame! When a tidal wave destroyed a village, it was because the gods were angry, not because we had not built it far enough from the coast. When a baby died of fever, it was because the village was sinful, not because it had inadequate water-filtration systems. When we committed a terrible sin, when we were heavy with shame and guilt, we could atone. We could be forgiven. It didn’t matter what we believed in, just that we believed’
“Once the Vernichtung came, once we had dropped bombs from the sky... why, that was the end. The triumph of science. No longer did we need to fear a god smiting us from the heavens. Man has taken on God’s role. Now we have the power to level cities, to take a thousand lives at a stroke. The good Charles Darwin explained life, you see! Science takes great steps every day, and every step is one away from the old ways. Science has removed the need to believe in anything, because we can explain it all now. Whats left? Who is there to take away our guilt and pain and anguish? Who can we blame but ourselves?”
“The wych-kin,” Thaniel whispered, mesmerized. “When there’s no more belief, the wych-kin come.” He winced suddenly as Alaizabel wrapped Cathaline’s belt around him and pulled it tight over the compresses, securing them in place.
The Doctor nodded. “Mankind is not yet mature enough to take responsibility for its mistakes,” Pyke said. “We have to believe in something beyond ourselves. As we took great strides in science, as we explained everything, we were left with nothing. A drudgery of factories and orphans and soot and smog. If that is all there is to existence, is it truly worth bothering to exist? Is it worth dragging yourself through all the pain, just to see that the end does not justify the effort of getting to it? The wych-kin live in cities the world over, Thaniel, because that’s where the hopeless gather to make their fortunes and fail.
“Somehow, though we could not admit it to ourselves, we were panicking. In the deep parts where science cannot reach, we were afraid of the emptiness we were making for ourselves, the self-destruction we started. So we made the wych-kin, woke some ancient part of our minds that we did not know we had, and fashioned creatures out of our own nightmares to terrorize us. Because all the hate and guilt and shame has to go somewhere, Thaniel, or it would eat us alive. Keep it in, and we’d all be like Stitch-face.
“You see,” Pyke concluded, “we in the Fraternity... we’re not destroying humanity. Humanity is destroying itself. We are giving it something to believe in again. Our gift to the world: new and hungry gods, something beyond science, beyond maths and the five senses. The Glau Meska, my boy. Oh, they’ll wake Darwin up, all right.”
The noise was too loud to ignore now, a seething, hissing, shrieking sound that sawed at the ears as it rampaged closer. Pyke, who had been caught up in his speech, had not paid any attention to it; but now the expression of satisfaction slid from his face, and uncertainty replaced it.
“What is that?” Alaizabel asked, looking up.
“I think,” said Thaniel with a red-edged grin, “your precious wych-kin want to meet you, Doctor Pyke.”
The Doctors eyes widened in horror as Thaniel said what he had not dared think. That sound, that sound.
Wych-kin.
“ You let them in!” he screamed, and a moment later he was pointing his revolver square at Thaniel’s head. “You’ve killed us all!”
And he pulled the trigger.
The wych-kin burst into the hall beneath them in a horde, shrieking and gibbering, and the screams of the cultists mixed with the insane cries of the creatures. Cathaline smacked the gun from Pyke’s hand before she had time to realize that the gun had jammed. Thaniel lunged at him, but Pyke was away, nimble for his age, and he was out of the door before anyone could stop him, disappearing down the stairs.
Thaniel scooped up the gun, spun the chamber with his palm and aimed, and suddenly the words of the Devil-boy came into his head, spoken in the lair of the Hallow Ghoul.
I speak of the force that created the physics of the universe, the force that makes time flow forward and not allow everything to happen at once, the force that sets the patterns to which the planets turn. Its weapons are coincidence, unlikelihood, happenstance.
Beneath him, all was chaos. The cultists were being torn to pieces, but Thatch remained untouched in the centre, protected within the summoning-circle, her arms still outstretched and her head hung.
He fired.
Thatch jolted, the old wych inside the young girl, and her eyes flew open, piercing up into Thaniel even across the great, crimson-lit hall. Between her breasts, a patch of blood was soaking through the white dress that she wore. Her arms sagged as if under a great weight. The face of Chastity Blaine wore an expression of surprise, but the eyes within it cursed him unto eternity. And then she toppled backwards, falling out of the summoning-circle, and was devoured.